The PractitioNERD

The name “The PractitioNERD” comes from a combination of the words practitioner and nerd, or “one who practices something, especially a hobby, topic, occupation, profession, or technique, that does not conform to society’s beliefs and trends, and who will make a radical change in the world.”

The website, launched June 2011, details my unique blend of interests, including (but certainly not limited to) architecture, video games, technology, gadgets and pro wrestling. Some posts have mentioned Gulliver, the world traveler invented by author Johnathan Swift, appears to have fallen on and bloodied a new building in London, that Chuck E. Cheese has been given a new rock-and-roll persona and that a video game released in 1986 might indeed be the most difficult of all time.

I was inspired to start the blog by a 1993 quote in the New York Times from Gerald Sussman, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor: “my idea is to present an image to children that it is good to be intellectual, and not to care about the peer pressures to be anti-intellectual. I want every child to turn into a nerd – where that means someone who prefers studying and learning to competing for social dominance, which can unfortunately cause the downward spiral into social rejection.”